Environmental Sensors in Space Travel

wrote to us and said, I have a question. In the movie Mission to Mars and a lot of other sci fi movies, the characters have a special device built in their suit to analyze and display the composition of their surroundings or the atmosphere composition. I would like to know if such a device already exists or not yet. So good question, Benjamin, And actually the answer was not as straightforward as I would have thought. I thought I could just google this and and be like, Yep, there

it is. You know, we've already talked about the Star Trek tricorder, which we were talking specifically about. It's it's medical uses, right, the ability to scan a patient for potential illnesses or injury. Right, but of course what the tricorder can also do is after you've beamed down to a planet and you're standing there with no helmet on, it will tell you if you can breathe the air right, which is important information that you probably should have gathered

before beaming down. Well, well that's the other cool thing. And stuff like Star Trek they can they can, you know, roll on up to a planet and say, like analyze the atmosphere, and then they'll come back with this detailed analysis instantaneously of exactly what is composing this planet. Probably also give you Nielsen ratings for what the indigenous population of that planet are watching at any given time. The Star Trek technology is is pure magic. This planet is

still stuck in reality TV. Keep going. Okay, so Warp

twenty the prime directive holds sway in such situations. Okay, So I figure we should sort of expand the question a little bit, not just about analyzing the atmospheric composition, but generally the state of institute environmental sensors, the kinds of things that can tell you the conditions on an alien surface or a planet, any place astronauts might want to go and generally answer the question should I take my suit off or would that be a bad idea?

All right, and you watched this movie, so you can actually see how the sensors are being used. Right. I was thinking one of you might have seen it, but neither of you have seen it. Right now, Okay, So Mission to Mars was a Brian de Palma's sci fi thriller that came out in the year two thousand and it was I believe, part of a spate of Mars movies. That other one with Val Kilmer I think it's called

Red Planet. It's the same sort of thing we see in Hollywood all the time, right where you you see a batch of films that are all more or less looking at the same kind kind of ideas. Yeah, that kind of confluence of theme that I'm never sure whether it's purposeful or competitive or I have a feeling it's one of those things where they hear, oh, such and such studio as making a volcano movie, will will make a volcano movie. So yeah, all of these Mars movies

from two thousand got pretty terrible reviews. But do you think it was justified? Well, I don't want to get too far into my own opinion. I will say that I did find some things about the movie kind of funny, such as that I don't know, maybe this is really the case at some point, but the like Mars exploration vehicles had you know, product logos on them. They said, like Pin's Oil and Kawasaki not if we're going the route of the Mars one colony. That seems like it

could actually happen. Well, you know, honestly, I mean, like if it lets us get more space exploration in there, I'm for it, Like like like NASA, Like why aren't we doing this? You're emerging NASA and NASCAR, so you have like the slim Jim Landers, the Budweiser buggy. Yeah, I'm okay with it. I think it would be great. I honestly, that's one thing that I don't think is that far fetched considering the privatization of space exploration, right,

But who's there to look at it? I mean, I guess if you're filming the whole thing anyway, anyway, we should move on because this isn't a brand extension. Yeah, yeah, I think it's more of your problem that like Penn's Oil is the wrong sponsor. It should be like dippin dots the space ice cream or something. Honestly, guys Mors is an untapped market. Yeah, so issues of plot and characterization asides. A lot of critics had problems with it. Strangely, I think I read that it was kind of popular

among a lot of French critics. But here's the basic plot of the movie. There is one Mars expedition. It's the first manned mission to Mars, and the characters go there and they're doing some science. They're attempting to begin a colonization effort, and something goes horribly wrong. There's a second team that is sent as part of a rescue mission,

and that's the basic set up of the story. Got okay, So I figured it would be good to go roughly in order because I was taking some notes while I was watching the movie about different environmental sensing moments in the film, and one of the first things I noticed that I thought was kind of interesting was that early in the movie, there's a part where they use a passing satellite that's in orbit around Mars to scan for radiation levels at a base camp on the surface of

the planet. And I thought, but before we even get to the in suit sensors, that was an interesting question to me alone, is that possible? Can you scan for radiation on the surface from orbit? Now, there's some issues I have. First of all, you have to define radiation because radiation on its own could mean lots of different stuff, right, I mean, I guess if they're looking for harmful radiation, they're looking at nuclear radiation. But largely when we talk

about radiation, we're talking about electromagnetic radiation. A lot of that you could pick up remotely because you could have sensors that detect various electromagnetic radiation levels. You know, there are a lot of ways you could do that with a satellite. I guess what they're they're probably thinking of

is ionizing radiation, right, That is trickier. Um, So you there are ways you could remotely since radiation, either directly or indirectly, But most of the ones I am familiar with are more immediate to sense radiation, Like like it's more of a of a device you wear in order that will alert you when you start to encounter dangerous levels of radiation. Yeah, yeah, it's it's an even from a few feet away. In most cases, it's it's anything

that is directly interacting with your sensor. Right there. Yeah, exactly, you have to be pretty close and we'll give some reasons for that. First of all, radiation is caused by nuclear decay or you can have cosmic radiation, so that you know, this will cause substances to give off these high energy particles. And that's the kind of nuclear radiation way think of when we think, you know, the dangerous

stuff that that could give you radio asian poisoning. Uh. Now, cosmic radiation alone is really dangerous, and we've talked about how if you were on Mars you would be prone to because they don't have Mars, they the planet. Those people on Mars, they don't They don't have the benefit of a magnetosphere, a magnetic field that would repel cosmic radiation, nor do they have a strong enough or a thick

enough atmosphere to help absorb that energy. So yeah, people who astronauts who would be on the surface of Mars would be vulnerable to this kind of radiation already. So presumably they're not scanning for that because they would already be aware of the potential for encounters with cosmic radiation. Now, if we're talking about nuclear radiation, do we you know here on Earth we would use something like a Geiger counter. Um and there is always a level of background radiation.

When you're on Earth. You're always exposed to radiation everywhere. I mean, there's there's certain things that are in the atmosphere that are radioactive. But life evolved on Earth in this environment, which means that we have a certain capacity to deal with radiation naturally. It's when those levels go beyond that background level where we start to encounter problems. Right when we start to have larger doses of radiation

that can be harmful. But if you're working, let's say in a granite building, you actually are working in an area that has a higher level of background radiation than someone who works and say a log cabin. Because granite is slightly radioactive. Now we built these things, you know it is, yes, and also it's not dangerously radioactive like bigger hunks of of uranium in there or plutonium. Then yes, then you've got some other issues to worry about. Maybe

you need to look into that quarry. But at any rate, we now have these devices Geiger counters that are really isful. Geiger owners detect radiation. They have an inert gas inside a tube, so the gas itself normally has no charge. When that gas encounters something one of these high energy particles, uh, like even a high energy photon, the gas begins to ionize and conduct an electrical charge. But that doesn't sound

like that would work at a distance, especially from orbit. No, this is something that you would have to be close enough for those high energy particles to affect that that gas. And there are different types of radiation, and some of them travel really long distances and some of them don't. So for example, gamma radiation, that's this really high energy radiation that can travel quite a long way. We're talking

like gamma rays, X rays. That sort of stuff falls into this category, uh that you know you could scan for from a distance. Actually you wouldn't have to be right there to find it. But alpha radiation and beta radiation, which are also hazardous at least potentially hazardous. You they don't those those and ie particles don't travel very far. We're talking a few feet in the case of alpha radiation, We're talking inches less than a foot, and it's still

very hazardous stuff. You don't want to come into contact with it. You certainly don't want to breathe it in. But you wouldn't be able to detect it directly with a Geiger counter until you were right there. Yeah, nowation fries exactly. Now there are there's some other things we should mention. Alpha radiation is pretty low energy. It doesn't have enough energy to penetrate the skin. However, if you were to breathe it in, yeah you don't, you could

cause massive problems for you. Any kind of way of bringing it into your body. You've got some serious issues. Um. Beta radiation can penetrate a little more than alpha radiation can. But still, if you have a decent kind of space suit,

you would be protected from this sort of stuff. Um, and a guy your counter would alert you to the presence of that kind of stuff too, so you would know, all right, I don't want to once once the meter starts clicking, uh, beyond a certain level, you know that you don't want to go any further in that direction because it's bad times for you. But again, really tricky to detect remotely because these these particles aren't traveling very far. So how do you detect the presence? Maybe you don't

look for the direct evidence. Maybe you look for indirect evidence. Ah, yeah, I've seen some research that's working on getting more distant detection of this kind of stuff by by looking for say like free electrons in the air due to gamma radiation or due to ultraviolet air molecules caused by fluorescing

nitrogen atoms due to alpha radiation UM. The hitches that we're still talking about really short distances, like maybe four meters that's about thirteen feet for that gamma radiation, and maybe fourty centimeters that's like sixteen inches for for the alpha radiation UM and and the other double bind here is that would probably need to know the atmospheric composition

in order to make that detection work. Now, for something like the actual planet of Mars, knowing the atmospheric composition isn't that big of a deal because we've already got instruments down there so we know about it. But if we're talking about this, this hypothetical situation in which we're rolling up on a planet and going like, Wesley, tell me how much nitrogen this planet has in its atmosphere, that's a little trickier. Right, Well, that's a good transition

to our next point. So I'd say, with the remote sensing of radiation, the point right now would be that we don't know how that would be done. Maybe there is a way, I don't know, but we haven't found it. But when it comes to the surface of the planet, we get a lot more specific with the kind of things we're looking for. So imagine you are an astronaut walking around on the surface of Mars. Say you're Gary Sneeze.

I'm usually gee sometimes I am too. And you find a cavern or something like that, and you want and you go inside it, and you say, I wonder if now that I'm in this cavern or enclosed area, the conditions are safe for me to take my helmet off and just just experience the fun of breathing in a fresh breath of Mars. So so somehow this cavern has has got a pocket of breathable atmosphere. Might let's say, okay,

good point. Let's reimagine this and say it's in fact a room that was previously part of an astronaut's habitat, And now you don't know if the conditions inside this habitat have been maintained properly, and you don't know if it's safe to remove your helmet and get a fresh breath of you know, a couple of years old. Astronaut b oh, right, you don't have you don't have necessarily working computer systems in the environment that would tell you

what the levels at least should be. Let's let's say that you're completely blind in this situation as far as what the conditions are, right, So there would be a bunch of things you need to check for, right. Yeah. One of the main ones would be the gases present in the atmosphere and the pressure at which they're present. Well, I think we'll get to that one more in the

last part, because that's sort of the big question. Other things that that I see happening in the movie Mission to Mars that they're testing our temperature for one thing that takes the temperature in the suit. That seems like a pretty easy one. Pretty the thermometers are really useful. They are They're pretty common. You can you can send that information directly to a digital readout. It will show up on the little screen on Gary Sinie's wrist and he says, ah, yes, it is twenty five degrees c.

That is that is fine. Now if if I'm not Gary sineee, but I still have his wrist, is that still did you cut off his wrist. And let's just say that I like into my possession. I'm not a very nice ass. Don't necessarily mean that I remove the wrist, but somehow I have it. I think this is why you're not allowed to go to Mars. That's fair, Okay?

With Gary Sinee specifically, For example, there are parts in the movie where they have an instrument that say checks for radiation and then checks I made notes here, also seismic and they mentioned the phrase anonometer steady one of those things. Even all right, well, I can answer some of this. So so if you're using like a rover to check for these things, which I think is what they're using, they roll a rover up to something. So we'll get back to Gary Sinise's wrist in a minute. Okay, Yeah,

because there there's some big questions. A lot of our conversation is going to focus on those questions, but we wanted to save that for the end because there's a

ton of it. So if we're looking at a rover sending a rover out to to get some readings for us, first of all, that would make a whole lot more sense because a rover, you know, obviously even if if it should fall to some sort of of malfunction or it is damaged in some way, it's not a person all right, Right, rovers are pretty great canaries because you can, yes, not have to worry about its livelihood, and they're they're probably not going to be affected by radiation the same

way people are. It will be able to continue to operate. So, yes, you could put instrumentation on a rover that would give you lots of useful information. Right. So, for example, if you wanted the rover to roll up to some feature on the surface of Mars and check for radiation, well we've already talked about that. It's pretty simple. You can have a Geiger counter, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you

would just monitor it remotely. You would have something that would that would record the Geiger counters findings and then you'd say, okay, well that spot is dangerously radioactive, we should not go there. Okay. What about seismic activity, very simple, yeah, yeah, seismic activity. Essentially you're looking for movement on the ground, right,

looking for seismic waves. Yeah, So as long as the rover has a chance to sit down for a second plant plant itself, then that one's yeah, that's that One's easy. You could have an accelerometer on there, or you could even have one of the seizom seismometers that we tend to use, things like and and these really pretty simple stuff like imagine you have a suspended weight that is

able to move freely relative to a stable frame. Okay, Now, when the frame starts to move, that weight will, because of inertia, move at a different rate than the rest of the frame. And it's through that difference that you're able to tell how much movement is going on in the relative environment. That's how a regular one here on Earth would work. Uh, you might just have a digital

accelerometer on there that would detect movement. The important thing here, like you were saying, Lauren, is the rover itself would have to be stationary at that point. You know, you couldn't take readings as it's moving because it would be corrupting its own data. So assuming that you could have it stop and planned itself nice and firmly so that it could it could do these readings, I don't see a problem with that one either. Okay, here's another environmental

datam it takes. They say anonometer steady. I didn't know what that was. When anonometer, I'm picturing some thing that looks like a scene enemy, right, Yeah, anemometer and important. But an anemometer is is a device for measuring wind speed. Okay, so it's I mean, it's like the most basic of things.

Like if you've ever looked at one of those scientific weather vanes, it tends to have a little kind of pin wheel type thing that's uh, horizontally mounted, not vertically, so it's got usually like little cups and that it will spin around in a circle when the wind is blowing, and the speed of that rotation. We end up converting that into figuring out how hard the wind is blowing?

Wind speed is that how we we interpret that? Right, So it's essentially a conversion you do of revolutions per minute, and then you you factor and how hard the wind is blowing. So again, as long as you're not moving, because if you're moving forward, then you're obviously generating your own right, right, you're moving through an atmosphere, you would be fouling the readings. But if it were stationary, then

it could certainly take that reading. What a stable reading would be I don't necessarily know, except to maybe say that the wind is blowing at a continuous speed, or maybe it was just in the script. Yeah, calling it calling it stable is not terribly meaningful. You would need to have a speed associate with it. You could say

no wind, but that's different from stable. Stable to me means that it's turning at a There there are a lot of lines in this movie kind of like we are ago that we're just kind of like there's just some just some jargon that's gone in to make it sound science art. Okay, but we we've done our little rover detour, sorry to tease, and then go down that road. Now we're coming back to Gary Sinise's wrist. Well should

his wrist monitor? Right? So, as we mentioned, he can look down at his space suit and there's little monitor mounted on his arm that has a bunch of tabs along it. I actually paused the movie and saw what the different tabs were. One says oxygen, one says environment, and one says med, one says thrust. I don't know what that's all about, and then the other one seemed to be about calms. So med I assume is medical of some kind, and we can talk about that in

a minute. Oxygen and environment. Those tabs seem to show atmospheric composition outside the suit and also atmospheric pressure. So so oxygen in this case, isn't his space suits oxygen supply? You think? No, I mean, well, I don't know if that might be what that tab shows, but environments certainly would be the external environment. So yeah, because I would my first assumption would be anything that says oxygen would

be the the space suits oxygen supply. Environment would be. Well, anyway he's using seeing these tabs might not mean anything at all. He'd be like they told the visual effects guy, make it look technical, right, Yeah, you're rust is good? Yeah, I don't Maybe he's like a big fan of the time warp. Well they have little suit jet packs. It could have something to do with that. There you go, There you go. Surely no one is going to pause this movie right on the screen and deconstruct on all

of these buttons. Anyway, take on one. It'll be great to all use science fiction filmmakers out there, because we will watch your movie and we will pause the screen. Okay, so let's focus on those environmental conditions. This seemed to be the core of what Benjamin was actually asking, so things like the pressure, the temperature, all these atmospheric conditions, and especially the composition of the gases and the environment

outside the suit. Is it feasible to have a suit that gives readings on all these things in real time? I think we're gonna have to get to atmospheric composition last. But when you're talking about a lot of these conditions, the there is definitely yes. Oh sure, yes, some of these are are incredibly I mean, on the grand scale of things, simple, yeah, And so obviously we have machines on Earth that can do all these things, but the question is could it fit on an astronaut suit and

work fast enough to operate in real time? So the first thing I want to talk about is the pit boy. Man. I love the Fallout games so much. The pit boy is incredibly useful in those. I don't have as much experience with fall I have played a little bit of Fallout too. I enjoyed it, but I never finished it. Follow Out three and Fallout New Vegas are some of the best games ever. But I might be biased. I've

watched other people playing, but I haven't haven't played it myself. Okay, so anyway, I'm aware of what the pit Boy is it's a it's a little risk mounted display and uh and so instead of having like a heads up display like you might and say Halo or something like that, you can you can go into this screen and it'll display you know, your your your health stats and your

inventory and stuff like that and skill levels. You know, the way everybody is is able to like I can quickly look and see how what my skill level in I don't know, reading is. I would love to have a wrist mounted monitor that quantified my skills and things like lock picking andressed. But anyway, anyway, yeah, like you said, it's a it's a personal electronic device and it's wrist mounted. It's got a little monitor and it gives you important information.

So people have actually made real life versions of these. So one that was just kind of for fun but is definitely worth mentioning because it looks so cool is in this custom prop artist named Zachariah Perry Cruz designed a really cool looking real life prop version of the pit Boy and the property created originally just showed screens from the game and it also had an audio amplifier.

But that that's cool enough, Well, that's adorable, But what if you could actually make a version of this that was useful in space and in hostile planetary conditions like

in the game. Well you can because some people did. Yeah, and so in UH space Apps, which is the International Space Applications Challenge, it's an organization that encourages sort of SI tech hackathons, they issued a challenge called Space Wearables Fashion Designer to Astronauts, which was quote to design wearable clothing and accessories that could be useful for space travelers and or the engineers and technicians involved with ground processing spacecraft and rockets. So it's a it's a sci fi

wearables kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah, and uh. One team involved in this, Team Reno, I believe right. Um responded by by, I mean they're obviously fans of the Fallout series the way that you are, Jonathan, because they were like, well, we're going to create the Pitboy three thousand, and that's what they did. In their own words, quote, Team Reno is bringing a piece of sience fiction to life by creating a functioning pit Boy three thousand from the popular

game Fallout. The goal was to bring environmental sensors in an easy to use cuff device that could help a where determine if their environment is safe or quote, is it safe to take my helmet off? Well, we've visited that question earlier today, and I like that they decided to go this route because clearly a lot of people have already been very interested in the tricorder approach and this helps differentiate their their device from all the medical

tricorders that are in development right now. Right So, Team Renoe designed a working wrist mounted pit boy with the display I believe based on an iOS application who was designed to mimic the pit Boy screen from Fallout the user interface, and supposedly it would report with accuracy relative humidity, altitude, latitude, and longitude atmospheric pressure, and that pressure is one of the things that was in the movie, not in Fallout,

but in Mission to Mars. Ambient temperature temperature is another one object temperature using infrared thermometer, so I guess that's the air versus a specific object and radiation. So they also apparently wanted to add like a heart rate monitor and wireless communications, but they didn't finish these during the hackathon time frame, although they would certainly be pretty easy

to toss in there. Sure, so the sensor hardware was a Texas Instruments Sensor tag, which includes temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a magnetometer or a magnetometer magnetometer mag magnetometer. I've said that word on this podcast before and I never get it right. It's okay, we we will continue to mispronounce words to our hearts content. Okay. The radiation was also detected via a separate Geiger counter, and this is great, but it does to answer one

big question, which is atmospheric composition. That was still the one that was at the core of Benjamin's question and the one that's kind of lingering, like is that possible? Can you make a suit that easily and and reliably measures the gases around you and tells you what elements are in them? Yeah, it's really a lot harder than stuff like say Star Trek has led us all to believe.

It was really only during the late eighties and early nineties that we developed the satellite equipment and computer technology necessary to monitor Earth's atmosphere. Um, this was during the Ozone kind of scare. I mean, I don't want to say scare because it's it's certainly a very legitimate issue. But uh, right around when we started paying attention to what was going on with the climate and pollution in

the ozone. Right, Well, there's certainly a difference that's important to make between scanning, say, the atmospheric composition of a planet from beyond and measuring just the gases ambiently around a person and uh, and in order to check out a planet. You know, I think anytime you are going to go to a planet, you're probably going to spend the time necessary to scan the heck out of it before you actually set foot on it and take your

helmet off. Now and now, in the case of of Mars, you know, we obviously have a lot of information already, both from using Earth based technology and sending probes that have started to really sample the atmosphere. In fact, we've got other ones that are either there now or on the way that our purpose that that's their purpose, is to really study the Martian atmosphere. But we're able to do some of this just using things like telescopes and

um spectrometers. Right. But of course, as we mentioned earlier, I guess the specific thing we're asking about is not the atmosphere of the planet as a whole, but in specific local conditions, like you go into a habit tax that. I don't know of any certainly not a handheld device that could do this. I know of handheld devices that could detect the presence of particular things like carbon monoxize, but I don't know of any that could give you a full reading of the entire composition of the air

within a like let's say we walked into a Martian stadium. Well, but what about something like like mass spectrometers? I mean, we have those on Earth sure, and and they can analyze a sample of stuff pretty good. I love how these things work. So a mass spectrometer, So let's let's tell tell the difference between spectrometer and a mass spectrometer. A regular spectrometer, like just a standard spectrometer. What it's doing is it's looking at the light that is being

reflected off of a planet. In this case, we could also look at light from a star and be able to tell you what constitutes that star, like how much of it is hydrogen versus helium? That kind of thing right share because it takes the incoming light and splits it through either prison them or some other mechanical means into it's it's constituent electromagnetic spectrum and then analyzes those things and goes like, well, if that's there, then that

means nitrogen. If that's there, then that means helium. Yeah. It kind of gives you an idea of what's there and at what concentrations in general. You know, it's not like a uh, you know, you don't get a pie chart necessarily, but you get an idea of the things that are there, and so we can do that right now. In fact, we have done that. That's where we end up coming up with these statements about whether or not a planet that's in that Goldilocks zone has anything on

it that we might think could potentially support life. But even then, it's it's it's sort of an overall bird's eye view is not far enough satellites eye view of what's going on. So mass spectrometers, though, instead of looking at the light just directly, what they do is you take a sample of whatever material you want to study. So if it's gas or whatever, uh, you then end up vaporizing it. If it's not gas, you vaporize it

and you ionize it. So you have added enough energy where you now have charged particles which then gets sped through magnetic field, and as they zoom through, the magnetic field actually actively separates these different particles into their constituent components, and a detector at the end of the mass spectrometer will be able to determine which chemicals, what what elements were in that composition, and it will give you an idea of how much of each one happened to be

in that composition. And Uh, they are not tiny. Yeah, I was going to say, obviously we have these machines, but the question is could you fit one on a suit? Uh No, No, not not as not as far as I right now. MS, as far as I'm aware, they're all like anywhere from well, I mean, the one that I have in my head is from like the nineteen seventies and is like car sized. I'm pretty sure that

they're more like refrigerator size cabinet side. So out of all the ones I have personally seen, they've all been quite large, like there's something that fit in a lab or something that can fit on a sizeable satellite. Uh. That doesn't mean to say that that maybe there aren't smaller ones out there that I'm just not aware of but I'm curious to see how far miniaturization can take

us with this particular technology. Well, I actually did a little investigation along these lines because I realized, well, the Mars Science Laboratory, you know, the Curiosity rubber uh mission, is taking atmospheric readings, and so I wanted to look at what equipment they have and what the profile and that was so the MSL featured the Sample Analysis at Mars suite, which combined a mass spectrometer, Like we just talked about a gas chromatograph which works together with the

mass spectrometer. I think that they worked together by separating the different chemical constituents of the air and then analyzing them. And then also it had a tunable laser spectrometer, and these things together were used to analyze the chemical composition of the Martian atmosphere and the Martians soil. So, according to the MSL mission homepage, the s A M suite took up quote more than half of the science payload on board the Mars Science Laboratory rover. Okay, so what's

the science payload? Yeah, I looked that up. I found a NASA press kit for the mission that said that the science payload was a hundred and sixty five pounds or which would mean that the sample analysis suite weighted at least eighty three pounds or thirty eight kilograms. So I don't know if all that equipment would be necessary if you weren't doing soil but only atmospheric analysis. But if we just assume for a minute that we're using the whole S a M suite, that's a lot of

weight to to a space suit. Yeah, but then again, something that weighs eight three pounds on Earth only weighs thirty one point five pounds on Mars. So I don't know, maybe that is feasible, especially if you assume that the S a M is carrying equipment that would not be necessary just for testing the atmospheric composition. Sure, I mean, I don't know. You're still carrying like something the size of a mini fridge on your back, I'm guessing, and

that doesn't sound fun to me, not at all. But not to mention the fact that you would have to what I guess you would put this on, I mean because because it part of your suit. I guess if it's part of your suit that it's gonna wait, it's gonna weigh eighty three pounds before you talking about Yeah, so, I mean once you're on Mars would be fine, but it would be really super heavy before you got there, right, I mean if this was something that you put on

before you left your spaceship. So let's say that you've got a special suit, probably in near zero gravity on your spaceship, right, but when you get on your rocket back on Earth, maybe there's different suits. Maybe that's what I was thinking. You would have to have different suits because otherwise heavy. Yeah, so I guess the bottom line was, uh, I don't know. We we went down some interesting rabbit trails,

but in the end, we don't know. YEA, there is a suit that can analyze atmospheric composition in real time. That was the other question was how fast can I do it. I don't have any information that would indicate it would take a very long time to analyze a gas sample from a planet, But I don't really know how long that would take. It might not be feasible

to just continuously update this information in real time. You might have a limited number of scans, or it might take a little while for it to tell you what the air around you is like. Uh, But Anyway, if there are any atmosphere scientists or NASA geeks out there who can help us with a more definitive answer, please right in. We would love to hear it. I think the I think the answer is, if you're Gary Sinise and you're going to Mars, make sure you have a

lesser known actor going with you. And you have that lesser known actor, take his or her helmet off first, observe their reaction, and then make your own decision. And also, if you're Gary se apparently, watch out for Jonathan Strickland because he's out for your wrists. Just one, just the one,

whichever one has the read out on it. Okay. If I wanted to follow up on one more of the mission to Mars, tabs and display, which is the one that said thrust, No, it's the one that's the one that said med okay, But clearly if the wrist has been detached, then that one's going to have some very negative readoubts. Right, So let's talk biomedical sensors and suits, all right, because that sounds really important. Also, so I found in there was a Kansas State University press release

that detailed how researchers at that University. We're working across disciplines to help design a future space suit that would include bio since ors to monitor the medical and physiological conditions of the wearer, so to combine those readings into one electronic system and then sort of contact the space

station or home base via radio transmission. And they would be keeping track of things like muscle activity with electromyographic sensors, or they would be able to track movement with accelerometers. They would track your pulse in, your blood pressure and blood oxygen saturation, and your breathing rate which could be

measured with a sort of belt around your chest. And another interesting fact they said is that they're trying to power the suit elements without using batteries, which they said could be dangerous because the oxygen rich gas composition inside the space suit. I guess that would be because the oxygen makes batteries a fire hazard. Well, yeah, I have sort of spark inside an oxygen rich environment. I mean, obviously we're talking here about where the primary gases oxygen

as opposed to in our atmosphere of our sphere. Where like that than any kind of spark would ignite our entire atmosphere, which sounds like a Bond villain plan. Actually no, wow, it does, right, So because of that, they're planning on trying to power it using body heat. That was fascinating. Yeah, this sounds like the best of all like wearable sport technology that I've heard of except for space exploration. Um so, oh that's really cool. Yeah, it's brainy and it is.

It's it's incorporating that same technology that we're seeing in uh in, in various wearables. Now that you know, now that we're seeing that kind of thing miniaturized to a point where you can have it in a tiny, relatively tiny form factor, there's no reason not to incorporate that into something like a space suit because it's not it's not measurably adding to the mass or the weight of

your payload, right right. And actually, going back to our note about medical tri quarters, then you know that kind of research and technolog you would absolutely plan to the sort of things. So it's all working together great. So, Benjamin, the final answer to your question is pretty much everything on the readout on the on the Astronauts suit in the movie we think is totally feasible, In fact, in

a lot of cases completely simple. The only one that we're not so sure about his atmospheric composition can be done. But the question is is it too heavy now? And if somebody again, if somebody out there knows the answer, let us know. I think I think it is completely feasible to have a direct link like radio transmission link between your wrist read out and say your spacecraft that can do readings. But again, that would not that wouldn't apply to something like a new environment you enter into,

like a new room. But you could at least get live readings from the spacecraft from anything any of its sensors, and have that display on your wrist. So some things you wouldn't necessarily need to have incorporated on your space suit. You would just need have a communications system so that

you could get the readouts from your spacecraft. Still not helpful if you're going to walk into what is now an abandoned astronaut habitat and figure out whether or not it's safe to breathe, that's not going to help you there. That's why you got to bring your lesser known actor with you. So yeah, I have to thank you very much for sending that question in. This was a lot

of fun to to look into. Uh, we we love this kind of science fiction stuff and we love learning about it because you know, this was this one was a research heavy episode and and those can be a lot of fun for us. We don't necessarily need to do them all the time, but we really enjoyed this one, so thank you again. And if you guys out there have any suggestions for future episodes, maybe you've got some other science fiction e idea and you're wondering is this feasible?

Is it just pure fantasy? Write us let us know what you want to hear about. We'll be glad to tackle that. Look into it for you. You can write us at our email address that is f w Thinking at how stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus. At Twitter and Google Plus, we are FW thinking. Just search fw thinking and Facebook will pop right up. Send us a message there and we will talk to you again really soon. For more on this topic in the future of technology,

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